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Research Subjects
GISTICS applies open-systems research to the subject listed below. We invite stakeholders in any of these subjects to begin an open-end investigation with us.
Society
Intangible assets now account for more than half of total market capitalization of all public firms. Brands and intellectual property constitute a large portion of value for these intangible assets; so does leadership, innovation, and information technology. Yet, we have no generally accepted accounting practice for measuring material changes in intangible assets. Big problem. Big opportunity. A deeper, more obscure issue entails our very idea of knowledge. Many people believe (mistakenly, we assert) that knowledge consists of objects and artifacts. We suspect that useful knowledge may not yet exist in form. John Sealy Brown in his very insightful book, The Social Life of Information, makes the case that the most useful knowledge lives in a social network, a community of practice. If indeed social networks create new knowledge, what’s your strategy for network knowledge creation? Finally, this brings us to the nature of knowledge work – a subject pioneered by Peter Drucker. The Web and Internet brought us many surprises and discoveries, including the self-evident fact that most customers of a major firm constitute a special class of knowledge workers. Customers access portals, interact with various digital services, and integrate their workflows and business process to ours. We continue to build the equivalent of “horseless carriages” called web services; we embed some very outdated concepts of usability. Rather than focusing of usability, we should instead focus on productivity. This entails the application of an explicit model for knowledge work and knowledge worker productivity to the desired and expected outputs that our customers called satisfaction. Do you have a general, applicable theory of knowledge work and knowledge worker productivity? Can you apply this theory to the desired and expected satisfactions of interactive customer relationships? If not, we can help.
Discontinuities represent unknown but regular and predictable change in the pattern of life and business. Peter Drucker speaks of a number of discontinuities that redefine the context and foundation of business: politics, geology, religion, knowledge, social institutions, etc. We believe a number of discontinuities will rock the developed world over the course of the next five to ten years. Peer learning networks strikes us as the next tsunami. What’s your plan? We believe that great marketing today entails making games worth play. Great marketing today makes customer problems so interesting and their solutions so intuitive that everyone wants to play and see how it works. Every firm should have a gaming strategy. Playing well-designed game should produce “truthful information” about customers, their buying criteria, and status as a brand advocate. We can that gaming strategy smart promotion. Making games fun not only means making them socially engaging, the breakthrough games should educate, uplift, and enlighten the player. This will require games to become part of peer learning networks – games plays among peers for purposes that go beyond winning and losing. Peer learning networks describe the underlying social dynamic of user groups and solution evangelism. To better understand this social dynamic, we recommend the classic text on these types of games, Finite and Infinite Games by James P. Carse. Great marketing now means fun games that expert users of your technology play with your novice or newbie customers. What’s your game plan? Of all the games that we can think of provisioning and sponsoring, we cannot imagine a better one that playing the peer-based game of adult literacy. Did you know that over 120 million adults in United States cannot read the newspaper, nor understand an electoral ballot. Do you suppose helping them learn to read would earn lifelong loyalty and advocacy for your brand? We think so. Call us. We have some ideas about how to transform this trenchant problem into a breakout strategy.
Cultural diffusion describes how new ideas work their way into the mainstream. Geoff Moore in Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado, and Malcolm Gladwell in the brilliant book, Tipping Point, outline the basic case for cultural diffusion. To what extent has your marketing team mapped the dynamics of cultural diffusion to market-making and business development? The Internet and trust network will only widen the performance gap between those firms that have harnessed the dynamics of cultural diffusion and those that have not.
Neotribalism and kenships represent recent discontinuities. Marshall McLuhan predicted that with ever more cool media that induce higher levels of interaction and co-imagination will change the body politic and society. We will become much more tribal. We will become much more engaged with others that share beliefs, values, and mindsets. The word ken connotes the idea of sharing an outlook, literally, to “see the world through the same set of eyes.” Your customers will continue building tribes and kenships. What’s your plan?
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Making the Business Case
